I dont believe the clich?s will change most peoples minds. Its too easy easy to say "history matters", it is much harder to explain why .For that, I think we should start digging deep, where it matters. Here are some emotive, but some also quite long-thought-out beginnings of answers, and to to the politics of what is currently happening. They are offered as food for thought, they are not the snappy by-lines that were proposed.
The way history shapes our dreams: dreams are what we build with
I believe there was once a land - that maybe almost existed when I when young - I could believe in, I could love, I could work for, fight for and if I truly had to do it, die for to defend it, for love is nothing if not that for which we will give our lives - when it truly must be so. Perhaps, somewhere under the ground, it is that I still seek, as I seek it everywhere in everything that I do. I cannot bring it back by unearthing the ruins of the past, but maybe, as we continue to contribute to the greater good, collectively we do prevent the memory dying, the dream despairing, the vision folding its wings, as politicians sell our land, its past and its future, to the highest bidder for the lowest goals: for power and for wealth, and for the few. Do not dream or imagine, that they are in the business of doing anything else.
Shame
Someone once said to me: I do not live in a third world country. I live in one of the wealthiest countries in the midst of one of the wealthiest civilizations that has ever existed. Until we are declared bankrupt, or starving, or so inept that we can no longer govern ourselves, we can afford archaeology.
Dispossession and manipulation
And without our past, something that the simplest civilizations on earth ensure through oral history traditions, we can be dispossessed of everything we have ever had: freedom, dignity, self determination, understanding, politics, tradition and identity. Without all this, well, we are little better than slaves.
Politics
Archaeology does not cost jobs - it creates them: it is a flourishing, if small scale, employment sector. Employed people, are good for the economy: the widest possible employment base, better still. Why should the employees of archaeology be sacrificed to the narrow financial interests of the building sector? In whose interest is this finally? Not the nation's, either culturally or financially. Cuts in archaeology do not create more jobs, it destroys them; and just puts more money in the pockets of the building magnates. To what pressure are the politicians bowing?
Howard Brenton the dramatist once came up with a line that still seems to me a somehow remarkably good definition of what culture is. As I understand it (or misquote it) he called it, "That good which is between us". Archaeology belongs to that good, it belongs to a society that believes we work, we earn, we learn, to create a society, and not just to create money.
Of course, maybe I'm missing the point.
The way history shapes our dreams: dreams are what we build with
I believe there was once a land - that maybe almost existed when I when young - I could believe in, I could love, I could work for, fight for and if I truly had to do it, die for to defend it, for love is nothing if not that for which we will give our lives - when it truly must be so. Perhaps, somewhere under the ground, it is that I still seek, as I seek it everywhere in everything that I do. I cannot bring it back by unearthing the ruins of the past, but maybe, as we continue to contribute to the greater good, collectively we do prevent the memory dying, the dream despairing, the vision folding its wings, as politicians sell our land, its past and its future, to the highest bidder for the lowest goals: for power and for wealth, and for the few. Do not dream or imagine, that they are in the business of doing anything else.
Shame
Someone once said to me: I do not live in a third world country. I live in one of the wealthiest countries in the midst of one of the wealthiest civilizations that has ever existed. Until we are declared bankrupt, or starving, or so inept that we can no longer govern ourselves, we can afford archaeology.
Dispossession and manipulation
And without our past, something that the simplest civilizations on earth ensure through oral history traditions, we can be dispossessed of everything we have ever had: freedom, dignity, self determination, understanding, politics, tradition and identity. Without all this, well, we are little better than slaves.
Politics
Archaeology does not cost jobs - it creates them: it is a flourishing, if small scale, employment sector. Employed people, are good for the economy: the widest possible employment base, better still. Why should the employees of archaeology be sacrificed to the narrow financial interests of the building sector? In whose interest is this finally? Not the nation's, either culturally or financially. Cuts in archaeology do not create more jobs, it destroys them; and just puts more money in the pockets of the building magnates. To what pressure are the politicians bowing?
Howard Brenton the dramatist once came up with a line that still seems to me a somehow remarkably good definition of what culture is. As I understand it (or misquote it) he called it, "That good which is between us". Archaeology belongs to that good, it belongs to a society that believes we work, we earn, we learn, to create a society, and not just to create money.
Of course, maybe I'm missing the point.